'Culture and religion are going in different directions': How Easter has changed in Ireland
Bishop Fintan Gavin at the Chism Mass at the North Cathedral in Cork city on Holy Thursday. This year is the first time he is able to celebrate Easter in-person. Photo: Larry Cummins
Ireland, once a predominantly Catholic country, is changing in more ways than just creed.
Easter, the most important celebration in the Catholic Church, previously saw the majority of Irish people attend mass more than once.
Coupled with this was the recently dismantled ban on the sale of alcohol on Good Friday. A ban that lasted 91 years, it stemmed from the interlinked Church-State relationship in Irish life and was only lifted in 2018.
In 2022, we look at how Easter has changed in Ireland, from how we celebrate it now to food and family, and from church to alcohol.
Fr Tom Hayes has been a priest for 37 years - serving the Diocese of Cork and Ross for almost all of that time and is currently Parish Priest in Enniskeane.
How has he seen our country's celebration of Easter change over those four decades?
"A couple of things have emerged over these years - weekend attendance is down, so Easter attendance is down," explains Fr Hayes. However, the change in numbers is cultural as much as creed-related.
"Easter used to be a time when no one went anywhere, there was no Ryanair, and there was maybe one flight going out of Cork airport a day and that was probably to London. Now Easter is a big get-up-and-get-away time," says Fr Hayes.
"The instinctive impulse is 'I'm getting out of here'," he adds.
The change in mass attendance is also affected this year by Covid, with a chance for people to travel properly for the first time in three years.
"It's the first time in three years we have in-person ceremonies, but it's also the first time in three years people can get away too," he says.
His church has a "rota of involvement" for shared duties such as prayers for the Easter period, but with so many people opting to travel this Easter, the rota was not so easy to fill as in previous years.
"It's been a bit of a challenge to get people. It's evolved as a reasonably gradual thing," says the parish priest.
Aside from the obvious change in faiths in Ireland over the last number of years, including many denominations and none, Fr Hayes says our culture has changed in these intervening years too, and therefore so has our treatment of and behaviour at Easter.
"There's a fairly high percentage of the population on the move this weekend. A lot of people take a break, that means that, along with that change and pattern in mass going, people's lives have changed too," says Fr Hayes.
Travel is not the only other influencer of change, believes the priest, but our working lives too, with lots of the population working on Good Friday, whereas they wouldn't have before.
The traditional time to gather in church on Good Friday would have been at 3pm for many parishioners, as it was the time "aligned with Our Lord's death", but nowadays Good Friday is a workday or a day's holiday, he says.
"The number of people available to come to church is down, and in most of my neighbouring parishes about 49% of the parish has left the parish on a weekday morning by 9am with people working or going to college.
"People are a lot more mobile and a lot less fixed on cultural traditions because everyone's lifestyle habits have changed in recent decades," says Fr Hayes.
And, again, like how our Good Friday has changed and how that has affected mass attendance, Fr Hayes says the same of Holy Saturday mass.
"For Holy Saturday night mass, that's on after dark, but for most people, Saturday is a night out now," he says.
From speaking to his own parishioners and other practising Catholics, those who travel abroad, especially to Spain, will mark Easter by attending services there.
"A lot of people who go to Spain, where Holy Week is fervently celebrated, will be watching the celebrations there," he says.
Overall, he sees the change in how Ireland used to celebrate Easter as a result of "culture and religion going in different directions. This hasn't happened today or yesterday," he adds.
School holidays are another factor. "All the schools are gone since last Friday and when I was in school I was there until the day before Holy Thursday," says Fr Hayes.
This year in his parish, there will be the children who made their confirmation participating in the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday.
Cultural changes notwithstanding Easter 2022 is a big occasion for the diocese of Cork and Ross for two reasons, one being the return of in-person ceremonies after a two-year hiatus because of Covid and the other is their new Bishop.
"With the Stations of the Cross on Friday, and Holy Thursday's Lord's Supper - it will be the first time having these ceremonies in-person. We got a new Bishop three years ago, Bishop Fintan Gavin, and he has never been able to celebrate Easter in-person, so this year will be the first time being able to do that," explains Fr Hayes.
Holy Saturday will be a "big mass", says the parish priest with the lighting of the Easter candle and a mass that is "still well attended". For others, Easter Sunday will be the "big mass" and for some Good Friday is the "most important". And there are others who come to all.
While Christmas is about the birth of Jesus in the Catholic faith and culturally and socially a time of celebration and gift-giving and gathering, it is Easter that gets a much bigger look in the Bible, explains Fr Hayes.
"There is enormous detail in the Bible about what happened around Easter, the people that were there, the places that were visited and the words that were spoken. Easter is much more significant than what's in the Bible about Jesus's birth," he says.
All religion aside, for Fr Hayes, it's mostly a time of "hope", as evidenced by nature. "Easter is a time of hope, it coincides with nature coming back above ground and people need a source of hope - Easter does that. Participation in these Easter occasions gives me hope," he says.
The role of the Church may have decreased in significance in many Irish people's Easter, but for Agnieszka Kruszynska it is a significant celebration. Living in Portmarnock in Dublin, Agnieszka is originally from the south-west of Poland, where there is a large population of Catholics.
"Easter is a big deal for Polish Catholics," she says. And now in Ireland many years, having had two children here (now aged 6 and 11), there are a mix of traditions.
"It has changed a bit since we moved here and our kids were both born here and they brought the Irish traditions to our house so we have both, but I don't want them to lose the Polish ones," says Agnieszka.
Growing up in Poland, she would have gone to church every day from the Wednesday before Holy Thursday right through to Easter Monday.
"It was six days of church-going. You wouldn't have to go for full mass, but my grandparents would go for three or four hours," she explains.
And in Ireland, and as an adult and parent, how does she now celebrate Easter?
"On Holy Saturday, we will have a food blessing. Before the pandemic you would gather in the church for 30 minutes then the priest would come and bless the baskets.
"We would prepare the food for the baskets on the Friday: every household would prepare a basket and some families would have a huge shopping basket," says Agnieszka. And what would you put in the basket?
"There are traditional things you put in the basket, like eggs. We paint the eggs ourselves and there are lots of traditional ways with wax and ink, and the kids use stickers and markers and do their own. We still do it here.
"We put in a small piece of bread and some sausages and ham, horseradish, salt, pepper, and a small figurine of lamb that's traditionally made out of sugar and some people do them with butter as well," says Agnieszka.
Each of the items in the basket that get blessed in church on Easter Saturday carry a significant meaning. "The eggs represent new life. Horseradish, because it’s sharp, represents any pain in your life. Bread is in there as you have to share it and you have to have bread for your family.
"This basket is really, really important," she adds.
A few Irish churches will do the food blessing. The contents of the basket are then shared and eaten on Easter Sunday morning. Easter Sunday mass would then be the "biggest mass of year, the resurrection", says Agnieszka.
Before she had her children and before the pandemic, she would attend one at 6am, but now she attends one at a later time in the morning. And while she attends her local church in Portmarnock, for Easter she will go to one of the Polish churches in Dublin city centre like on High Street or on Dominick Street.
The celebrations continue until the next day too, with "Wet Monday" meaning you wake up to water being thrown on you. "You can't leave the house without being wet, we keep that tradition going here," says Agnieszka.
"Our duvets are soaked and all."
If you happen to visit a Polish Catholic's home on Easter Monday, before midday, you can expect to get soaked too, she warns.
For 91 years, it was illegal to sell alcohol in Ireland on Good Friday. That was until 2018 when pubs were allowed to open for the first time since 1927.
After nearly a decade of lobbying, the Intoxicating Liquor Bill 2017 passed, replacing its more archaic predecessor, the the 1927 Intoxicating Liquor Act. Publicans heralded it as a "new dawn".
But now Good Friday is just like any other day in their business calendar. There was some novelty in 2018, not so much in 2019, and then came the pandemic. In 2022, Easter weekend simply signifies the start of the tourist season.
Cork city publican, Michael O'Donovan, the third-generation proprietor of the Castle Inn on South Main Street has witnessed Easter in the pub across many decades.
"Pre-2018, Holy Thursday would have been busy, and people would have been out after work. After 2018, with Good Friday now open, it just blends into another day," explains Michael.
"Holy Thursday and Easter Saturday were big days and now it's spread over the whole weekend," he adds.
However, Good Friday's closure didn't just affect people living in Ireland who wanted to frequent the pub, but people visiting on Easter weekend too. The closure was a source of confusion for tourists.
"Pre-2018, with Easter being the start of the tourist season, you'd have English stags and hens coming and they couldn't understand why we were closed, now it's great we can welcome them in," says Michael.
The needs of all those in search of a pint of draught stout aside, for publicans Good Friday was a day to get jobs done.
"Tradespeople did the work on Good Friday. Pubs were the only places closed, everyone else was working. You'd get the floors and counters varnished and tiling done," explains Michael.
"After the crash, lots of bars won't open until 4pm or 5pm, and they can do jobs during the day so the necessity to do it on Good Friday isn't there," he adds.
It was actually around the time of the Celtic Tiger that publicans and the Vintners' Federation of Ireland started agitating for change in the 1927 law that banned the sale of alcohol on Good Friday.
"Growing up it was always accepted that it was closed, but once we got to Celtic Tiger times, everything was open; restaurants were open, society was open and we were just closed.
"Then it started in earnest in 2008 and in 2009. It was nearly 10 years coming, between talking about it and lobbying TDs and ministers and getting it through the Dáil," explains Michael.
By the time the 91-year ban was lifted, Good Friday 2018 was a busy day for publicans he says, but 2019 "was much quieter". And now?
"Well we've Cork and Limerick playing on Sunday we'll be busy with that and this weekend is the real kickstart to the tourist season - there is real anticipation for that, for a better second quarter, for a better year after the last two," says Michael.
Included in this anticipated resurgence is also the resurgence of the draught pint, even among resource-poor students. "People really appreciate the draught product because that's what they couldn't get at home".
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